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DS 43: Guest Review of Brainwrap Comics, Panda Xpress, and Melonpool

Special guest Phil Kahn joins us again for our weekly webcomic review session. Phil is a fellow webcomic “critic” who writes reviews on his own blog I’m Just Saying. Before we get to the reviews during the show we have a lively discussion about the criticism and webcomics, announce a slight delay in our contests announcment while we put together the prize package, and play some new webcomic audio ads. After all that we get into this weeks reviews.Here are the comics we talk about this week:

Sorry the post is a little later than usual this week. I had some problems with libsyn.com where we started hosting the podcast files. I can’t even get into the site right now, so I had to move to our back up plan. If anyone knows what is going on with libsyn please let me know.

Attention UK & Australian Listeners: – If you watch the show Lost be aware that there may be a spoiler in this episode. I didn’t realize you guys get the show many episodes behind us and I referenced a very recent episode that was aired here in the States. Sorry about that.

I had to stop have way through the show to comment on the critique concept.

Personally, I think that in a medium as new as online comics, it is necessary to have a strong creator-based critical forum. Much like Van Gogh through his many letters to his brother, Theo, discussing the changes in art during his lifetime, it is the creators who understand the ongoing process. And can give an inside look on why the movement even exists.

Outside critics are needed in the long run too objectively evaluate the overall influence of those who participated in the movement, but at the early stages the very concept of what the movement is about are not yet formed, making objective analysis very difficult, if not impossible.

PX! would like to give a shout out to the fine men at digital Strips, for a thorough and entertaining review of PX!
Special props go out to Phil Kahn.
PX! laughed and laughed and laughed, and then we chuckled slightly as we listened to a wonderful review.
Art Monkey and Grammar Cowboy are merely hollow shells created by PX! to give a more human face to a comic created by itself.
While PX! cares about humanity, it cannot get too attached, due to the coming robot wars.

Oops… wonder if a small spoiler warning should be posted for your UK listeners – we\’re only a few episodes into the first season of Lost over here, so as soon as I heard you mention it I made strange noises and flapped my hands against my ears for a several seconds. Some if it got through though…

On the whole critic issue: I don’t think web comics have evolved to the point where there will be too many outsider critics. That will come with time through. Just hang tight, it’ll happen.

I think all kinds of crictics are good. Some times it’s good to have an insiders point of veiew, some times an outsiders is better. It just depends on the issue.

As for crictism being journalism, keep in mind that journalism is more than just reporting the news.

I work at a college paper. We do give people the news. We also report other people’s opinion. This is part of our job. At the paper, I’m work as editor, reporter, columnist and critic. As such I report other the news, people’s opinions as well as my own. It’s all journalism.

I consider what I do here to be journalism. Sure I mostly report on what I like, I’m still reporting stuff.